The Other Gates
by Ink.Incorporated
Summary: A new lead on the Stone brings Ed & Al to open a different kind of gate...that accidentally takes them to a small town in Ontario, where they're left at the mercy of two smart, evil, sarcastic, etc 12-year-old girls. Ch. 80 spoilers, manga based. Enjoy!
1. Without a Trace

_This is a joint fic, written by Dare Deville and Smart One, AKA Ink.Incorporated, AKA Rachel and Elaine. This story...may or may not be about us. Certain things are true, while others are not. The first chapter was written by Smart One, but the concept of the story was almost completely Dare Deville's idea. Some of the later chapters will be written by her also._

_E: The story you are about to read is true. The names have been [sometimes changed to protect the innocent [oh yeah, like we're soooo innocent. Note to any stalkers: The town, school and street names are 100 fake, and all the locations have nothing to do with where we actually are. If you have any IDEA how much research we had to do to get these facts right about Ontario... Anyway, I hope you people like the chapter, and I also hope this isn't TOO much of an overdone plotline. We just thought it would be funny._

_R:We'll try to make this story as good as possible. So if you have any comments/questions, please tell us. And remember, this story is based off the manga. NOT the anime. So if you only watched the anime, then you probably won't really know what's going on. Well, we hope that you enjoy and please, please, please leave a review._

_**Disclaimer: Ink.Incorporated does not own Fullmetal Alchemist, or any of the copyrighted property mentioned in this story, including songs, brand names, books, franchises and movies. These are all owned by their respective...owners. This fanfiction is a work of fiction (no, REALLY?) and any resemblance to actual persons or places is entirely coincidental, or if intentional are used fictitiously. None of the events portrayed actually happened. That is...you can't prove that they did. We don't own anything except our own original characters. **  
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**Underneath the Cselkcess Ruins**

**The Great Eastern Desert**

**January 4, Year 15 5:22 PM**

"Kimbley was lying. He must have been." Edward couldn't possibly believe something so unlikely from someone so untrustworthy, no matter how much he wanted it to be true. "If these really were another set of Gates…"

"But what if he's _not _lying? Ed, if these really are _toll-free gates_, we can get our bodies back right here and right now!" Alphonse knew just as much as his brother that the idea was almost impossible, but he seemed to have let himself forget that. More than anything, he wanted Kimbley to be telling the truth.

Ed understood that, so he decided to humour his brother for a little while. He supposed there was _some_ fact behind Kimbley's claim. "Okay…even if we trusted Kimbley, we'd still have to figure out how to open these gates. They're definitely different from the normal ones…"

And they were. While the gates the Elric brothers had seen almost five years before were solid, dark and square, these were arched in cracked white marble, and the strange designs etched upon them glistened bright, eerie red. Instead of suns, there was a single enormous pentagram in the center, surrounded by pairs of glowing crimson eyes.

"I already figured out all that! What do you think I was _doing_ all night? Since, let's not forget, I couldn't fall asleep even if I wanted to. See all the red on the doors? The only thing that would make sense here is if all of it is part of some different kind of Philosopher's Stone."

"Why a different kind?"

"Because there aren't any souls in it! I don't know how I know that, but this stone definitely wasn't made of human lives. I can _feel_ it. It's the only thing I've been able to feel for five years."

"So you know how to do the transmutation?"

"Yeah. We have to use this circle." Alphonse pulled a scrap of paper from somewhere inside his armour. On it was a roughly yet intricately drawn transmutation circle, with a pentagram in the center like on the doors.

Edward still looked sceptical. "But where did you find out all of this? How can you be sure it's right?"

"Brother, I just _know_ it's right! You have to trust me on this. Please. These gates are going to close soon. This armour is going to reject me again soon. Besides, isn't this why we came all the way here in the first place?" Alphonse really had no idea how he knew all of this. But something was telling him that he was exactly right. The gates wouldn't be open for more than a year, and they couldn't afford to wait that long.

"I… I guess you're right." Ed was convinced now. He looked from his brother to the paper in his hands, to the Gates, and back at his brother. "Let's draw the circle right now. Do you have chalk?"

"I always do. This is really going to work. I'm sure of it. Soon I'm going to be able to eat apple pie…"

They set to work drawing the circle. Al's plan called for it to be 50 metres in diameter. The cold, flagstone floor was almost three times that size, and the squeaking of chalk bounced and echoed across the cathedral ceiling for an hour or so. All scepticism was forgotten in the simple act of drawing.

"Is that all?" Edward looked up at the mass of steel that was his brother, who checked his scrap of paper and examined the circle.

"That's everything. Are you ready?"

"If you are."

"One…two…THREE!"

_Clack, clack, clack._

Winry, who had come from upstairs where the expedition was camping to yell at Ed for denting her toolbox, stepped inside the cold stone room in time to see the transmutation circle light up, and everything became a whirl of eerie blue and red light as the marble doors creaked open. Unearthly black hands reached through the huge arched void that now lay ahead, and pulled the Elric brothers into it with them. Neither of them seemed to have time to say anything at all. They were just instantly taken away. The doors slammed shut abruptly. Winry stood frozen on the spot for a moment, staring at the place where Ed and Al had disappeared. She realized that what had just happened must have been the same thing that had happened to Alphonse years ago, when his body was taken away. She knew, of course, how Edward had saved him- by sacrificing his arm. But she couldn't do that… She wasn't an alchemist, she didn't know how to bind people into suits of armour, or how to cut off your second arm after one was already gone. She considered, for a moment, screaming at the gate until something happened. But screaming wouldn't bring them back. She needed help to get them back. Winry dashed out, and her footsteps echoed for quite some time in the silence. The transmutation circle had now returned itself to plain white chalk on the floor of an empty room.

**Callaway Street Public School Gymnasium**

**Morrison Falls, Ontario, Canada**

**November 6, 2007 3:46 PM**

"Tell me again, Lainey. Why am_ I_ helping _you_ clean up_your_ mess? I'm not even _in_ your class!" Rachel dropped the stack of pinnies and the soccer ball she was holding and sat down on a stack of chairs, which wobbled ominously underneath her.

"Because," Lainey replied, "_You're_ my best friend, and that's what best friends _do._ Besides, this isn't even my mess." She gestured around the stage they were sitting on, with its thick blue curtains down and all manner of sports equipment scattered across it. "It's not _my_ fault that the idiots in my class practically started a freakin'_riot_ up here. Since they got caught, we were all _supposed_ to help clean it up. But, since they're _losers_, they all _left_, and made _me_ do all the_work_."

Rachel shrugged. "Yeah… but why did it have to be _me_? Why couldn't you just get _Candy_ to help you or something?"

"Well, Candice took the bus home because she had Tae Kwon Do…or Guides… or something. But since I missed the bus, Dan has to come over to walk me home at five, because apparently twelve-year-old girls get kidnapped more often than fourteen-year-old boys or something. I'm not trusted to walk across town alone. But_ you_ live close to school, and I remembered that _you_ have to _walk_. So now you have to _help_ me, got it?"

"Ugh… FINE." Rachel groaned. Then she smiled in her evil little way. "But you _so_ owe me for this. Next time-… wait, Elaine, did you just hear a really weird noise?"

"Yeah…"

Both girls suddenly turned serious. The sound they heard was much louder and much, much scarier than another box of tennis rackets falling from the top shelf in the storage room. (That happened twice already). They ducked under the thick curtain and leapt down from the stage. It was higher up than more modern stages, so they hit the ground hard, but nothing could have hit them harder than what they saw next.

The ceiling had collapsed.

They stood horror-struck staring at the destruction before them. Elaine was looking at the chunks of metal and plaster on the floor, as well as the wreckage of the expensive motor that made the divider curtain in the center of the large gymnasium rise and fall. Rachel was staring up at the gaping hole where the ceiling used to be, and what had caused it to fall.

"Oh man, we are _so_ screwed…"

"Uh, Lainey, you might wanna look up." Rachel advised her best friend without taking her eyes off the huge, swirling, reddish-black vortex over their heads.

Elaine looked up, and then screamed. "Holy $#!!"

Rachel stared at her. "I thought you didn't swear!"

"And I thought giant interdimensional vortexes didn't appear in the Callaway gym."

"Good point."

The girls were so distracted that they almost didn't notice when a pentagram glowed on the surface of the vortex and two figures- one huge and one small- pieced together in front of them. (a/n: For lack of a better word. What's the opposite of disintegrated?)

The first words that sprang to Rachel's mind were "What the hell?!" which was very common in her vocabulary. Too common. It didn't seem to fit this situation. So she didn't say anything. The first words that sprang to Elaine's mind, however, were "Whoever the hell you are, you're paying for this!" Which she said. Loudly. She usually did.

Ed and Al looked down at themselves. "It didn't work, Ed! I'm sorry… I… I really thought it would work…"

"Forget that, Al, where the hell are we?!"

"PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" Elaine waved her hand in front of Edward's face. "In case you can't tell, you just completely totalled the Callaway Street School gym. And now you're going to fork over the money to fix it."

Ed, who was pretty stunned by this time, automatically said, "Forget money, I'll fix it for you right now." Elaine raised her eyebrows as she watched him walk over to the walls, clap his hands and slam them onto the old, painted cement blocks dramatically.

Nothing happened.

"What the… why can't I transmute?" Ed tried again. And again. Still nothing.

Rachel finally spoke up. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm trying to use alchemy to fix your ceiling for you, but it's not working and I don't know why." Ed explained.

Rachel just looked confused, but Elaine's initial panic and anger subsided a little at an opportunity to use her vast knowledge of obscure and random things. "Alchemy? Isn't that some medieval science where people were trying to turn rocks into gold and make the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Isn't the Philosopher's Stone that thing from Harry Potter?" Rachel asked.

Elaine was about to groan at her friend's ignorance, but Al cut in. "You know about the Philosopher's Stone? Do you have one?"

"_Have_ one? They're not_ real_. They're just from legends. People _supposedly_ had them a long time ago, but now they're only really known about through Harry Potter and stuff like that."

"Can we meet this Harry Potter guy? I'd like to ask him about the stone…" Edward looked extremely intent.

Rachel and Elaine exchanged glances. Elaine sighed, then said, "…You're not _from_ around here, are you?"

"I don't know! Where ARE we?"

"We're in what's left of the gym at Callaway Street Public School, Callaway Street, Morrison Falls, Ontario, Canada, North America, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, The Milky Way-"

"We get the picture." Ed cut in. "Is any of that near the Cselkcess ruins? Or Amestris?"

"Where??" Elaine asked, "I have a world map on my bedroom wall, and I know for an absolute fact that Tetris or whatever is not a country. You guys are either a special effects team for Prank Patrol… or you're from another dimension. Holy crap, this is exactly like my brother's screenplay. Only they're not from any cartoon that I know of."

"Another DIMENSION?" Alphonse and Rachel said in unison. "How is that possible?"

Elaine and Ed replied in unison, "How should I know?" Elaine continued alone with "As far as I _do_ know, it's _not_ possible. Now who ARE you, and what's with the big robot guy?"

"Who are you calling a robot?!?!" Al said, sounding offended.

"True, we haven't introduced ourselves… We're the Elric brothers. If we weren't from another dimension, you probably would have heard of us. I'm Edward, and that's my little…okay, YOUNGER brother Alphonse. And he's not a robot, he's a soul alchemically bonded to a suit of armour."

"Are the laws of physics different in Tetris? Because here in Reality, that's not possible, "Edward". But I guess this isn't reality after all, because this whole thing is physically impossible, and way too horrible to be happening to me. That really sucks…This means I'm schizophrenic or something…_Great._ I'm clinically insane." Elaine sank to the ground and continued mumbling hysterically to herself with her head in her hands.

"Sorry about my friend Lainey…She's really scientific and stuff. I'm Rachel. Normally I'd be freaking out like she is, but… I've been wishing for like my entire life that something cool like this would happen to me, so… I don't want to wreck it by not believing it. Plus I don't think the laws of physics were really doing me much good anyway. But I still think Alphonse is a robot."

"I'M NOT A ROBOT!" Alphonse knocked his own head off and bent over so that Rachel, in all her five-foot-three-ness, could see into his empty armour. "SEE?!"

"Whoa. You're… you're empty. How come you can move and stuff?" Rachel sounded curious, but not disbelieving; Elaine stared into the armour with an expression that suggested that the struggle to comprehend the situation was causing her physical pain. That's just the way she was. She let her brown hair fall into her eyes as she kept repeating, over and over, "That's not _possible…_It's_not_ possible… It can't be real…How can that… Why can he…"

Alphonse began tediously explaining to Rachel about the blood rune that kept him in the armour; Edward took a moment to absorb what the hell was going on. The gates must have been more like a passage to this other world. Somehow, instead of retrieving what they had lost, he and Al had ended up in this enormous rubber-floored room. There was a large stage at one end, and doors along the sides (five on the left and two on the right). There were six basketball nets… and the ceiling was all over the floor thanks to them. The only other people in the room were these two weird girls who didn't know anything about Amestris but knew something about the Philosopher's Stone.

The one girl, "Lainey", even without the fact that she was kneeling on the floor mumbling hysterically, was downright strange looking. She was wearing a baggy, faded denim jacket with beige sleeves, a dark denim skirt that didn't quite reach her knees, and black-and white striped tights. Her hair was both light and dark brown, hung in a loose ponytail that was falling out and drooping into her face, which was covered in zits. Her earrings didn't match; one was a large, dangling bronze feminist/women's symbol, and the other was a tiny fake diamond stud. Her eyes were hidden at the moment.

The other girl, Rachel, who was now dropping tennis balls into Al's armour while he tried to reach inside to get them out, had dyed-red shoulder-length hair and a lot of freckles. Her eyes were blue. She was wearing black cargo pants and a red, black and white fall jacket. The only jewellery she had was a large metal pentagram on a plain black string. Ed wondered whether there was any connection between it and the pentagram on the gates… but no, this kid didn't seem to know anything about the gates.

"Oops…" Rachel had just dropped a basketball on Al from on top of the stage, where it got stuck where his head should have been.

"HEY! Get this thing out! I can't move it!" Al said, trying to grip the basketball.

Ed decided that he would try to ask the sceptic girl more about this world. He walked over and knelt next to her. "Um…hello?" She looked up.

"What? Haven't you already destroyed enough?"

"I didn't destroy anything! Okay, you said you knew a bit about alchemy, right?"

Elaine perked up a bit on the subject of something she knew about. Sort of. "I don't really know much more about it that "turning rocks into gold and making Philosopher's Stones"…"

"The Philosopher's Stone! I'm pretty convinced now that this is definitely some kind of other world, or… or…"

"Parallel dimension?"

"Um…Yeah. So what I want to know is, what can the Stone do in this –whatever you want to call it- place."

"Well, in the Harry Potter books… Here, this is basically everything I know about it. The Harry Potter books are by Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who lives in England. The first book, out of seven, is called, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." It's all about magic and wizards and stuff. Nicholas Flamel, who I _think_ is actually in real legends, was supposedly the only known person left to have a Stone, and it can create the Elixir of Life, which makes you immortal if you keep on drinking it, and it can also turn any metal into gold. At the end of the book they destroy it, and Nicholas Flamel, who's like 476 years old or something, finally lets himself die. I know that in like real medieval times, alchemy was pretty much in the same league as witchcraft at one point, and I think they burned alchemists at the stake. But this one guy supposedly succeeded in making a Philosopher's Stone. He had two names… One was Paracelsus, and the other one was really long…Something-something-something-something-Von Hohenheim."

"Did…did you say Van Hohenheim?"

"No, I said _Von_ Hohenheim. Why, someone you know? In a lot of books where people go to other dimensions, everybody has _alter egos…_but he's from, like, a thousand years ago. Ooh… that reminds me…" She seemed to have accepted the whole other dimension thing as scientific fact, thus returning her to sanity. "What year was it in your old dimension?"

"Year 15." Edward responded automatically. They couldn't have changed_ timeframes,_ too, could they?

"Yeah, and…? Fifteen-what? 1915? 1415? 4015?"

"1915."

Elaine gasped, then sighed. "Ohhhh man… Oh man, oh man…"

"What? What is it?!"

"Now we have a big problem. It's 2007."

"WHAT?! You mean this is the future?"

"No, not _just_ the future. It's still a parallel dimension, remember? This isn't your freaky alchemy world. Hmm… what kind of technology do you have? Do you have electricity?"

"Yes."

"Computers?"

"_What_-now?"

"Okay… Radio?"

"Yes."

"Airplanes?"

"Huh?"

"Phones?"

"Yep."

"Alright then…looks like I've got a LOT of explaining to do…" Her eyes fell on the collapsed ceiling again. "AHH! A LOT of explaining to do! RACHEL! Leave the armour freak alone and get over here!" She turned worried and upset, and hissed, "What are we gonna do about the ceiling?!

"Oh, crap, I forgot about that," Rachel replied. "Well, I don't think anybody can really blame us for it… how were we supposed to have knocked all those metal beams down?"

"That's true… If only there was snow, then they might think it was all from snow damage… Maybe if we go to the office all upset and crying, they'll feel sorry for us and won't ask how it happened? They'll probably attribute it to something in the structural design… or hopefully something that the insurance will cover… Look really scared, okay, Rae?"

"Wait, wait, wait… it was _these guys _who did it!" Rachel indicated the Elric brothers, who were now standing opposite them. (Alphonse had the basketball inside him)

"Yeah, but how are we supposed to explain that to the _principal?_ Uh oh… Why couldn't this have happened when the whole class was here? Then it would be everyone's problem, and then they'd bring in the Feds or the Men in Black or whoever it is that deals with these things… But no, we can't do that, can we? Now that we've met you guys, you're gonna blackmail us into keeping you secret or something, aren't you? This whole thing is gonna end up with me in jail… or a mental institution… I can just _tell._"

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E: Was that entertaining in any way? Please review and tell us what you liked and didn't like! Although, the next chapter and a half are already written, but we're gonna wait for some reviews. At least 5, okay? Please? 


	2. An Abundance of Questions

_Welcome to chapter two! We know we said we were going to wait for five reviews, but we got two reviews and three favourite/ alerts, so that adds up to good enough in our books. -shrug- so without further ado... Review replies: (Thanks so much to our two reviewers!!)  
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**_Devil-Speaker: _**_E: Yay, I'm glad you like it! It will get better soon also. And you're our first reviewer, which means I hearby give you this complimentary virtual slice of pizza and a virtual coupon for a free game at laserquest. They're not real, but it's the thought that counts..._

**_Wong-chu:_**_ E: Thanks... But just log in, Dan! What kind of weird and random name is that? You receive a virtual slap from a virtual beaver. _**_  
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_E: I wrote this one too. I hope you people like my writing style... you'll be seeing a lot of it in this story. But Rae is writing most of the next chapter! In one of the Viz Media volumes of the manga, Mei Chan is referred to as May Chang. Personally I like Mei Chan better, so that's what I'm going to use. But if you like May Chang, feel free to just think that instead. Also, I know it says in the summary that there would be chapter 80 plus spoilers, and there haven't really been any yet, but there COULD be in the future, so be careful if you're not done reading. (I got rid of all that stuff about the"contest" that was here before. It may return later, though...)_**  
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_R: Yeah, well unlike Lainey, I don't have as much to say, except please read and review! _

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**The Cselkcess Ruins Expedition Base Camp**

**The Great Eastern Desert **

**January 4, Year 15 6:04 PM**

It had taken Winry about fifteen minutes to get back to the base camp and explain what had happened. Then the entire camp- Scar, , Mei Chan, Colonel Mustang, Lt. Hawkeye, 2nd Lt. Breda, 2nd Lieutenant Falman, Master Sergeant Fuery and Havoc (It took a while to get his wheelchair down the narrow staircase) all had to come downstairs and see the gates and the transmutation circle. They had all seen the gates before, but everyone had been tired from arriving two days ago, and it had taken them a long time to find the passage that led underground. The expedition was expected to last a long time, so nobody was in much of a hurry. All that had changed within an hour.

bent down and examined the circle, and Mei Chan wandered over to look more closely at the gates. Scar looked at the black scrapings that were left on the floor, extending outward from the gates. Winry now explained in more detail exactly where the Elric brothers had been and how they had been taken inside the gates to Colonel Mustang and company, and Havoc was sitting useless and abandoned in a corner with no cigarette to comfort him.

The alchemists had spent a long time examining the area and comparing notes. Winry and the…um… "military people" helped out in any way they could. Havoc had wheeled his chair away long ago, having found a room that was full of ramps. Steep ramps. The wheelchair-accessible version of a roller coaster! Cries of joy (and pain) could be heard echoing back to the main chamber for ages.

Eventually, the alchemists came to a conclusion. "It can't have been a rebound, because nothing was given in return. These gates aren't really an equivalent exchange…They're a _portal._" Mei Chan finished dramatically.

"A portal to _where,_ though?" Winry asked.

Scar answered her with "Most likely, a parallel world."

**The Hall **

**Callaway Street Public School**

**Morrison Falls, Ontario, Canada**

**November 6, 2007 4:08 PM**

"Alright, so this is what we're gonna do." Elaine was now in full military command mode. "You two," She indicated Ed and Al, "Are gonna go outside and stand under one of the little shelter thingies around the doors, act like you're just hanging out there or something. Wait, even better- Hide Alphonse in the corner, and- Rachel, give me your cell phone."

"WHAT? No! It's mine!"

"GIVE IT. This is important." Rachel handed it over. "Edward, this is a cellular phone. Hold it up to your ear like this…" She demonstrated holding the phone, "and pretend you're talking to someone. No one will bug you if they walk past." She handed the phone to Ed.

"Um…okay. Do we go outside now?"

"No, not until I'm done explaining. So then Rachel and I will run to the office all crying and stuff and act like we're traumatized by the collapse. Then they should call my dad and he'll make Dan come and walk me home…and we'll explain to Dan what happened, and he should be able to help us figure out what to do next. We'll come outside to you guys then, and tell you what's going on. Okay?"

Ed and Al nodded, but Rachel said, "Hold on a minute. I'm not crying. I refuse. No way."

"Aw come on, Rae!" Elaine coaxed. "It'll be totally fake… If you're ever a voice actor, you'll have to fake cry at some point. Just…pretend that your house burned down, or that your dogs died, or… or… think about _puppets."_

"Ahhh! Not puppets! Curse you puppets and your damned flying machines!" Rachel had…_issues_…with puppets.

"Good. Now we both have to make ourselves cry. You guys go outside now."

**Under the little shelter thingy **

**Behind Callaway Street Public School**

**Morrison Falls, Ontario, Canada**

**November 6, 2007 4:37 PM**

"You believed us way faster than they did." Edward was talking to Daniel, Elaine's older brother. They had just finished explaining the situation to him, after which he replied with nothing but "Sweet. This is just like my screenplay."

Dan was tall for his age, probably around 5'7. He had short, natural dark red hair and more freckles than Rachel. He also wore square glasses with thin copper frames. Generally nice to people, good with electronics. Typical…but crucial to the evil plot that was forming here.

"So like I said," Elaine addressed her brother, "We need your help. What do we do with these guys? Who else should we tell? Where are they gonna stay? How are we gonna explain the whole damn planet to them?! Argh!"

"Uhhh… they could stay…in the basement, maybe?" Dan suggested.

"NO! I may be evil, but I'm not THAT evil."

"Why, what's wrong with your basement?" Alphonse asked earnestly.

"Well…" Elaine began, "It's unfinished. It's basically just a big cave under the house."

"We're okay with caves, aren't we, Al?" Ed said.

"Are you okay with giant centipedes and no bathroom?"

"Uhhhh…I think I'll have to see this first."

"Wait a sec!" Rachel cut in. "Don't you think we should be figuring out how to get these guys _back_ to their other dimension thing?"

"Oh yeah…" Elaine said. "I totally forgot to ask. How did you get here, anyway?"

"That's a REALLY long story." Al said.

"We have time to listen to it." Dan said. "Our dad went out to Tim Horton's, (that's a coffee place) and he doesn't expect us back until five."

"Ooh, really? Then tell us! I wanna hear." Elaine looked expectantly at the Elric Brothers.

"Alright… here's the basic summary. We're alchemists. When we were little our father left and our mom died. We learned alchemy to try and bring her back, but it didn't work. I lost my entire body and Ed lost his leg. He sacrificed his arm so that I could come back and be in this armour. Then Ed became a state alchemist so that we could figure out how to get back to normal. We were looking for the Philosopher's Stone, because we thought it would work. Then we went to these ancient ruins with these gates that were kind of like the gates we were pulled into before, and we thought that maybe they would help us get our bodies back… but it didn't work and we ended up here instead."

"What? But you HAVE all your arms and legs…" Elaine looked at Ed, confused.

In the chill of November, Ed took off his jackets (You know, the red one and the little black one) and one of his white gloves. Everyone except Al gasped.

"So it's _you_ who's a robot!" Rachel announced triumphantly.

Elaine just stared. (big surprise.) "It's…fake? But you can move it that much?" She turned to Dan in hopes that he knew something about prosthetics. "Is that possible here? How do you power it, Edward? How can you move it that much? Isn't it, like, really heavy? Does it hurt? How does it _work??"_

"You ask _way_ too many questions. Ummm… I can move it because it connects directly to my nerves… It's powered by the electricity created by muscle movement, damn right it's heavy and it hurt like hell to have it put in. If you want to know any more, you'd have to ask my mechanic, who unfortunately is in another dimension at the moment."

"I see."

"Now I've got some questions for _you._ Why is it so COLD?"

"Because it's _November_, maybe?" Rachel said.

"Yeah, I don't know what the climate was like in your dimension, but here it's really hot in summer and there's a lot of thunder storms. In fall it's really nice when it's not raining, and same with spring. In winter… snow. And frigidness. It's November sixth, so we'll probably be getting the first good snow in about two weeks. Wait, is that arm okay with coldness?"

Al realized the problem right away. "Oh no, Ed! You switched your northern-use automail for desert-use! Now it'll just make you even colder!"

Ed put his jacket back on immediately. "AHH! I already lost an arm and a leg! I don't want to lose the joints, too! We need a doctor… Aaiieee…"

"Ahh. Brain hurts… Too many questions to ask!" Elaine took out what was left of her ponytail and pulled her hair in front of her face. "Can we just go home now, Dan? If dad's out then maybe we can get these two set up in the basement, at least temporarily…"

"But aren't they gonna need food? And showers and bathrooms and exercise and clothes… I'm not made of money, you know!" Dan protested.

"So get a job then, you slacker!" Rachel advised. "At least you're old enough."

"I don't need any of that stuff, actually." Alphonse piped up.

"But I do!" Edward countered.

"Well, you could probably shower and stuff when our dad is either napping or going for coffee…I could probably use a little less food, so I guess we'll just spare whatever we can for you… exercise… there's a park near our house…and you could probably borrow some of Dan's clothes, but since he's fourteen they might be kind of big on you-"

"FOURTEEN?! I'M FIF-" an evil plot formed quickly in Ed's mind. Shorty no longer! "Um, I'm FAIRLY sure they'll fit okay. After all, I'm very... very_ tall_ for my age."

Alphonse groaned to himself. _Did he really just say that? He DID! I guess he deserves to feel tall at least once in his life…Oh, whatever._

"Hey, what about me? I need my clothes, thank you very much!" Dan objected.

"Aw, come on! It's important. What time is it?"

"4: 48."

"Oh no! We gotta hurry if we want to have enough time. Rachel, you stay here or walk home or do whatever it is that you usually do… I'll call you as soon as I get the chance. Dan, we somehow have to get Iron Man here all the way across town in under ten minutes without attracting too much attention…"

"How are we supposed to do that?" Ed asked.

"Take the side streets and run like heck?"

"Works for me."

**102 Corrigan Street**

**Nine minutes later**

Edward, Alphonse, Daniel and Elaine leaned against the side of the old brick house they had arrived at, gasping and panting. (Well, Al wasn't panting, but…)

It took Elaine longer than anyone else to catch her breath. She hadn't run that fast since…since…Come to think of it, that had been the fastest she'd ever run in her life. "Okay, this is it… Dan, you have the key, right?"

"Yep." Dan unlocked the front door, which was painted bright red, and let them inside, first into the small screened porch, and then through the next door that led to the kitchen. It was a fairly large room, with bright yellow walls and a round pine table in one corner. Then Elaine took the lead and showed them through the doorway into the living room. Right next to the doorway was a shabby-looking but recently painted white door. Daniel reached up and unlocked it.

A steep, (so steep it was a few degrees away from a ladder) sagging stairway lay before them, unfolding into musty, unbroken darkness. Unbroken, of course, until Elaine turned on the light. Then it became a dimly lit, musty-smelling, steep, sagging staircase with rocky walls lined with boxes of light bulbs, cans of paint, etc. and crisscrossed with pipes. Elaine extended one foot gingerly through the door. She could count the number of times she had gone into the basement on one hand. Why? Because. Normally she couldn't get past the whole steep staircase thing. She had always been afraid of tripping on the steps and landing on the cold stone floor among the dust and spiderwebs and… She just really didn't like it.

"Ugh… I hate it down here…" There was no hand railing on the stairs, so Elaine gripped the wall despite her hatred for spiderwebs. She was fine with the spiders, but the webs… Beckoning for the others to follow, she stepped slowly and carefully down the crooked stairs.

The ceiling was low at the bottom, and blanketed heavily with spiderwebs. The walls were not "stone" so much as plain old rocks. They jutted out onto the floor and covered it with a thin film of pale brown dirt. There was a stack of paint cans and an ancient wooden chair close to the stairs, and the furnace was humming and rumbling off to the right. The room extended just around the staircase, where there was a window up high and the rocks took over most of the floor.

"Umm… Ookay. I'm gonna go get you guys some stuff to… make it fit for human habitation, so… make yourselves at home, I guess." Elaine zipped back up the stairs, and Dan followed close after. They left the door open a crack.

"Well, now I see what they meant…" Al began.

Ed was standing on tiptoe while hunched over and trying not to touch anything. "Just tell me if you see any giant centipedes."

"I think she was kidding…"

"Yeah, you THINK."

At that moment Elaine appeared at the door again. She didn't want to come down the stairs again. "Here's some blankets." She chucked the pile of blankets down the staircase. "The scratchy one is to cover the floor, and the other ones are for…blankets. You should probably set up camp around the corner there, so if someone needs to get a lightbulb or something they won't see you."

Ed scrambled to spread out the scratchy blanket, while Al looked at the other three.

Elaine and Dan returned several more times with various objects.

"Pillow."

"Broom and dustpan."

"Granola bars."

"Stereo and headphones."

"CDs."

"Radio thing with a built-in TV."

"DVD player."

"DVDs."

"Books!"

Elaine carried a canvas bag of books on each arm and a teetering stack in her hands. She edged cautiously down the stairs and then wobbled to the carpet-…er…_blanketed_ area and dropped the stack of books at her feet.

"These books," She began, picking up the biggest and heaviest of the pile, "Seemed like the fastest way of teaching you guys about this world without talking for hours on end…" She showed them _The Timechart History of the World "_This one will teach you all about history." _Geographica_ "This one tells you about all the countries and the climate and stuff. Guarantee ya there's no Amestris in there." _Pocket Visual Encyclopedia _"To teach you about all the tech and scientific discoveries…" _Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons_"For when you get bored with non-stop information…" _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ "If you think you'll get any research value out of it… and… all the other books, just some fiction so you'll figure out how normal people act."

"Thanks…" Al started, but Ed cut in with "WAIT a minute… What's all this shiny stuff, and these round things in the cases? The DV...TV...CRs or whatever, and this cellular phone…I don't know what any of this is!"

"That's what the encyclopedia's for. Okay, those round things in the cases are called CD's, that stands for Compact Discs, and they have music on them. When you put them into the CD player like this-" She demonstrated with the 2004 Juno Awards CD-"You open the lid of the player and open the case. You have to be careful not to scratch this shiny part of the disc. Then you set it, label-side up, into the player. You have to make sure it's set on the CD setting, or otherwise you'll get the radio, which is good too, but that's not my point here…then you use these buttons to select the song number, and when you pick the one you want you press play. You guys have to use these headphones if you want to listen, because you're gonna have to be, like, deathly silent all day or my dad will find out you're here. Here, Edward- Can I call you Ed? It's shorter…"

"I thought that was kind of obvious, but yeah, sure, everyone does."

"Good, then here, Ed, put these on your ears and listen. This song is called "Innocent".

Ed pressed the headphones to his ears and heard, just as Elaine had said, music... It wasn't like any other song he'd heard before, and the sound was crystal-clear, nothing like the static-y radios he'd heard before, or even one of those new gramophone things...

_Oh, Johnny wishes he was famous  
Spends his time alone  
In the basement  
With Lennon and Cobain  
A guitar and a stereo  
While he wishes he  
Could escape this  
It all seems so contagious  
Not to be yourself and faceless  
In a song that has no soul..._

"Whoa. Hey Al, listen to it!" Ed tried to put the headphones on Al, but was somewhat hindered by the fact that he had no ears. "You know, I never even noticed your total lack of ears before."

"Well then…anyway, the DVDs work pretty much the same way only they have movies on them, and you put them and the headphones in the DVD player instead. Then you press play. I think that you can figure out the rest…"

"But instead of figuring out everything about this world, shouldn't we kinda figure out how to get back to OUR world? I mean, we weren't even trying to come here in the first place…" Al protested, while absent-mindedly trying to figure out how to put the headphones on so that he could use them properly.

"Ooh, right." Elaine turned and yelled up the stairs suddenly. "HEY, DAN!"

Dan came down the stairs quickly.

"What?"

"We have to figure out how to get them back to their dimension."

"Right… We don't really have much experience with parallel universes, maybe you should tell us more about how you got here. You said something about some kind of _gates,_ right?"

"Yeah. They were in this big room underneath the ancient ruins of Cselkcess; basically they were big arched doors, all white marble with all kinds of weird designs on them, in dark red. It looked like the Philosopher's Stone. Oh, and there was a big pentagram on them, you know, a five-pointed-"

"Yeah, yeah, we know what pentagrams are. I draw hundreds of them on my homework every single day." Elaine cut off Al's description.

"But then how did you get to the gym? There aren't any gates there…" Dan asked, confused.

"I just know that the ceiling collapsed and there was a lot of red light coming out of this big swirly vortex-type-thing, and then these two sort of materialised in the middle of the gym. There weren't any doors or anything." Elaine recounted.

Ed was hit by a sudden idea. "You didn't see a transmutation circle appear anywhere, did you?"

"A _what_?"

"A transmutation circle. It's the source of power in alchemy. If you're going to do something with alchemy, you _transmute_ it."

"So "transmute" is like "alchemy-ifying stuff?" "

"Pretty much."

"I see."

"So did you see a circle anywhere? They usually have lots of designs in them…"

"I don't _think_ so…" Elaine strained to remember everything she had seen. "Wait, wait... There was a pentagram! In the vortex. It was all glowy red, and there was other littler stuff around it too, I think… maybe I could draw it…"

Al pulled a scrap of paper from his armour. "Did it look like this?" It was the sketch for the transmutation circle they had used to open the gates.

"Yeah! Just like that! So…if you find that circle somewhere, that's the way to get back to your dimension?"

"No, probably all we have to do is draw it and transmute it. Right here would be just fine."

"NO! That would make our house collapse! Can't you do that outside? There's a park around the corner, you could draw it on the basketball court with sidewalk chalk or something."

"Um… Okay. To the park, then. Can you take us there?" Ed asked eagerly.

"No, Dad should be home any minute. It's just around the block, you should be able to find it." Dan said.

"Yeah, you can leave through the window over there, it should be unlocked…and come back in that way too if it doesn't work, okay? And then we'll meet you here tomorrow morning. Try not to let people see you. That shouldn't be too hard since it's dark, but still, be careful." Elaine instructed.

"Good luck, nice meeting you," Dan added, realizing that they probably would never see these people again. "Yeah, that too," Elaine agreed.

Luckily the window was wide enough for Al to squeeze through, and the Elric brothers walked off into the darkness towards the park, not quite sure of where they were headed next.

Back upstairs, Elaine was on the phone with Rachel. A very serious conversation was taking place.

"So Lainey, what did you think of that Edward guy?"

"Well, he was actually taller than us…and he seemed way too mature to be the same species as the guys at Callaway…but he definitely said he was younger than Dan, so I guess he's thirteen? He's got to be about that much older… and he seemed pretty smart too."

"Yeah, but what do you _think_ of him?"

"_Ohhh,_ right. I _guess_…what about you? Do you?

"Maybe."

"You_ do…!_"

"Yeah, well, you do too. I could tell by the way you were yelling at him."

"I yell like that at _everybody!"_

Both girls started laughing. They couldn't stop laughing for a long time.

"Ahhh… So we both do."

"Yep. Oh man, we sound like stupid girly girls with no lives."

"Totally."

"But at least we're not like that for more than, like, 10 percent of the time."

"I guess it doesn't matter since he's probably back in his own dimension by now…"

At that very moment, "He" had just finished the transmutation circle and was about to use it. The stars above the Elric brothers were pale and blurred in the weak November sky, and the sound of two pairs of hands hitting frozen asphalt was barely heard against the blasting whistle of the freight train rolling past the park.

* * *

_R: Well I hope you enjoyed the chapter! The next one will be out as soon as we finish it. And please please please please review!_

_E:Yes. R&R. This time it's RAE's turn to write the chapter Mwa ha ha haaaa... _

_I'll shut up now. -is slapped by virtual beaver-_


	3. A Shortage of Answers

_Chapter Three has arrived! This one was more of a joint effort- both of us wrote parts of this one! And now for our reviews: (WHOOT we've got 10 total!)  
_

**Phantom Sunsong:** E: Cool name! ...Wow. Thanks so much! This is our first really detailed review, I think. You might be a bit disappointed by this chapter though, I think it's a little bit dull and there's not quite as much humor, but do try to enjoy it. Once we get through all this introduction though, things are REALLY gonna get interesting, so bear with me!

**Wong Chu: **E: Dan. Quit it. HEY EVERYONE! WONG CHU IS ACTUALLY DAN, THE GUY IN THIS FIC! HE'S MY DUMB BROTHER!

R: --Hits Dan with virtual beaver-- Heh heh heh... And what the hell is with the name Wong Chu?? His name should be something that describes his annoyingness.

**Element Girls:** E: Thanks! Another detailed review... I'm glad you thought all that stuff was funny... It just seemed to fit so well! Happy Birthday to your brother! And yeah, this is based off the manga. I tried to watch the anime, but the voices were annoying and my internet was slow. I had to make up my own continuation of the FMA plot since it's not done, which was hard. Hopefully this will make you laugh a bit too!

**Shard Nightfox: **E: Well, it's here! Enjoy! You even get to be in this chapter...

**Banana Drum: **E:...I think you're overestimating my intelligence here, man. Can you give me a hint? Please?

**_E:_**_ Yeah, so this is our third chapter. It took quite a while, and it's not quite as good in my opinion, but once we're finished all the intro junk, it will really get good. Ooh, short note this time._

**R:** _I actually find this chapter quite interesting and hopefully you will too! Please r&r!_

**Underneath the Cselkcess Ruins**

**The Great Eastern Desert**

**January 4, Year 15 6:18 PM**

"So then…they didn't sacrifice anything?" Winry asked.

"Nope," Mustang reassured her. "It looks to me like all it takes for these gates to open is a transmutation."

"But then if you transmute it again, shouldn't we be able to get them back just like that?" _Isn't that all that should happen? If Ed and Al are still existing on the other side somewhere, shouldn't we be able to just pull them right back?_

Dr. Marcoh answered her this time. "I'm afraid not. This is a one-way trip. The only way to come back from the other side would be if there was another set of gates somewhere in this parallel world that could be transmuted."

"But there _is_ another set, right? Isn't there?" said Winry somewhat desperately._ It wouldn't make sense if there was only one gate…No way to get back…There HAS to be another set…_

"There's really no way to tell." Mei clarified. "We don't know where they've ended up… But logically there should be another set, yes."

"But what are we supposed to do? Just wait around and hope that they'll figure out how to come back on their own?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"It would work best," Scar added, "If we waited perhaps a month leaving them to their own devices, and then if they are still missing after that, we can enter the portal ourselves and try to find them."

That didn't sound good at all to Winry, but she supposed it would have to do, and nodded just the same. For once she didn't have any better ideas at all. Hopefully she wouldn't have to go through the gate… She was counting on those two idiots.

**The Basement**

**102 Corrigan Street**

**Morrison Falls, Ontario, Canada**

**6:55 AM**

"What, you're still here?" Daniel, his hair still damp from his shower twenty minutes ago, had staggered down to the basement before breakfast to check on the refugees.

Ed and Al were sitting subdued on the scratchy blanket in the corner, flipping through the piles of books that surrounded them.

"The transmutation failed, just like every time we've tried to do alchemy here." Ed explained absently from behind _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone._ "So now we're going to hide down here and research everything about this place until we come up with another idea."

"So are you hungry or anything…?" Dan asked, still pretty dazed. (Hey, bear in mind that it's before seven AM.)

"I'm good." Al replied.

"I could go for some coffee…" Ed said. "I was up pretty late reading this Harry Potter book. It's really good, even if there's not much about real alchemy in it."

"Do you want milk and sugar in it?"

"Sugar: yes. Milk: NO."

"Okay."

"Wait, where's your sister, Lainey, or whatever her name is?"

"Tch…_sleeping._ She doesn't get up until 7:15. But I could wake her up if you wanna talk to her."

"Nah, that's okay…but could you tell her to come down here once she wakes up?"

"Sure." Dan started back up the stairs, then stopped. "Oh yeah, _that's_ what I wanted to ask you guys… If you're going to be here for a while, you've got two choices: either hide out here 24/7 like Anne Frank and never again see the light of day, or go to school."

"_School?"_

"Yeah, you know, you go there to learn stuff, and…"

"We know what it _is,_ but why would we be in school?"

"Because, if people see you wandering around town during school hours, they'll start asking questions, and before long someone will find out where you live and the government will send a truancy officer to make you come to school."

"What? But…but we _graduated_ already! We quit school years ago!"

"But aren't you, like, the same age as Elaine and Rachel?"

"You mean they're still in school?"

"Duh. They're not even in high school yet."

"_High school?"_

"Sheesh, you must've had a worse education system in your dimension than we have _here,_ and that's saying something. You're probably gonna have to enroll in grade seven tomorrow. Do you know any French?"

"What's that?"

"A language. Ookay, then you can't be in my sister's class, but maybe you can be in Rachel's class… You know what? I'm just gonna let _them_ deal with this. I don't really have anything to do with it." He kept walking up the stairs. "So no milk, but sugar, right?"

"Um…yeah."

The door creaked shut, and Ed and Al turned to look at each other. "I don't wanna go back to _school,_ Ed!"

"I don't see how you _could_ go back to school in that armour, anyway. I think you're going to have to hide out here in any case. Armour isn't really common here, it looks like. But hey, look at this line in Harry Potter." Edward leaned over to show his brother a passage in his book.

"_The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other and Harry was sure the coats of armour could walk."_

Al laughed a bit when he read it. "Do they actually walk around in it later?"

"Not so far, but maybe they will. I wonder if this JK Rowling just made all this up, or whether she actually _knows_ something. That girl said that she lives in _England…_Hey, can you find that in the map book?"

"Sure. What continent do you think it's on? Oh wait, never mind, there's an index. England… England… Ah, here it is. Whoa, it's _small. _Uh… what country are we in again?"

"Canada, I think."

"Whoa, Canada's HUGE!"

"No kidding! So England is way on the other side of this ocean… aww, I wanted to meet JK Rowling. We're in... _Ontario, _right?"

"It's right down here… Do you see Morrison Falls anywhere?"

"Nope. I guess it's really small."

**Rachel's Room**

**22 Black Street**

**Morrison Falls**

**7:30 AM**

_Click._

"_-luck, twenty percent skill  
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will  
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain  
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name_!"

Rachel let the song finish before sitting up and hitting the sleep button on her clock-radio. She lay back down and almost dozed off again. But then she remembered about the really weird dream she'd had. _A suit of armour… it was at school... Oh yeah! And the ceiling. Candice and Elaine would love to hear about that one. Elaine was even **in** it… a lot! Wait a second…that __**happened**, didn't it! __Yeah! That's where I was yesterday, definitely. And before I went to bed… I was on the phone with Elaine, and we talked about it. All of it… must have been real. Real!_

The memories of yesterday came flooding back to Rachel, and she suddenly lost all desire to sleep in. For once, she was extremely excited about going to school. This was it, this was finally it. No more making up OCs for Naruto and watching reruns of dumb shows. Something exciting was happening to her. These people were _alchemists,_ and alchemy was sort of like weird magic, wasn't it? And they were from a different _dimension_. Rachel began to wonder just what kinds of things would happen next… It wouldn't be boring at least, she was sure of that. There would definitely be some _action_. Gunfights, car chases, hand-to-hand combat, they might even get to see another dimension! _Damn, this is so awesome! THANK YOU, GYM CEILING!_

"Rachel! Are you up yet? Get ready or you're gonna be late for school again!" Rachel's mom called from the room next to hers.

"Yeah, I know! I'm up!" Rachel stood up and turned on her radio to her favourite station. Then she walked over to her crammed closet and pulled out a grey T-shirt, black hoodie and her favourite black pants with a bunch of pockets and patched-up holes. As she walked to the bathroom with clothes in one hand, she quickly grabbed a towel from the cabinet and walked into the bathroom before her brother Brent could.

About 20 minutes later, Rachel came out fully dressed with her brownish-redish-shoulder-length hair all wet and unbrushed. After carelessly brushing it, she put on unmatching socks due to losing most of her pairs and the rest being in the wash. _I better not be late today. Then that would be, like, the 18th time this year. _Rachel thought while putting on her witch's pentagram necklace and her necklace with her house key on it. She went to the kitchen down the hall from her bedroom and quickly found some random snacks that she could eat for lunch and stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag. Rachel packed her lunch into her backpack and a few other things such as her two binders filled with drawings, lined paper and duotangs, her pencil case and some unfinished math homework.

"Mom, I'm going to walk to school today! Since I'm almost ready and it's not even 8:30 yet." Rachel called out to the direction of the room next door.

"Okay!" She heard her mother reply.

_Hmm... since I still have enough time, I guess I could have some breakfast before I go to school._ Rachel rushed to the kitchen and grabbed out a box of Frosted Flakes from the cupboard and a bowl, spoon and a carton of milk. After eating her cereal, Rachel went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

She rushed out the door and down the sidewalk towards Callaway street.

**The Basement**

**102 Corrigan Street**

**Morrison Falls**

**7:48 AM**

For quite some time after they had heard Daniel leave the house, Edward and Alphonse continued reading and researching, discussing their findings in conspiratorial whispers, up until the point that they heard the now familiar sound of the basement door creaking open and closed again, followed by very nervous and careful-sounding footsteps that could only be Elaine's.

They realized this immediately, however, because she tripped over the rocks at the bottom of the staircase, releasing a muffled shriek and a few mumbled curses, and landed sprawled on the floor so that she could just see around the corner to where the Elric brothers were staring at her.

"...Oh good, the hostages haven't escaped." She said jokingly, standing up and brushing dust off herself. Her hair was dripping, unbrushed and generally insane looking, much darker because it was wet. Dressed more normally today in a pair of dark jeans and a bright red T-shirt bearing the word _Enaahtig_ (which neither Ed or Al had ever heard before), Elaine seemed to be almost recovered from yesterday's ...hysteria.

Almost.

"You wanted to talk to me?" she began, getting right down to business.

Ed replied in a similar business-like tone, "Yeah. Your brother told us... told us that, if we were going to stay here, we'd have to go to... school." It was obvious from the look on his face that Edward wasn't very happy about it.

Elaine blinked once or twice, with an expression similar to the one she had worn the previous day. "...Eeesh. That never occurred to me." She paused for a moment, thinking through the various possibilities of sending these two..._alchemists_... to Callaway Street Public School. _Alphonse is all...armour, so that would just be really weird. Maybe if he stayed here... Then Ed doesn't really know anything about this planet. That could be a problem, especially in geography. And the whole issue of French... In a whole different world, they wouldn't have French, right? But then... why do they speak English? _That last thought took root in her mind, refusing to let her think of anything else, so she figured it was best to ask the refugees.

"I know this is off-topic, but I seriously need to know... If you've never heard of England, then how come you're speaking English?"

The two brothers just stared at her, then Alphonse replied, confused. "We're not speaking... whatever you just said. Actually, I was going to ask you, how come you speak Amestrian but you've never heard of Amestris? Because-"

Alphonse was interrupted by his brother. "Wait, wait... how is it that we speak the same language but we call it something else? And seriously, how likely is it that we get sucked into a parallel universe, and the people there just _happen_ to speak our language?" Ed tried to think about it, but it didn't make much sense.

"Or", Elaine continued, "How likely is it that two freaks from another dimension who randomly fall from the sky just _happen_ to speak the same language as me?"

The three sat in silence for a moment among the books, rocks and dust. Finally Al piped up, "Maybe we should just ignore that question for a while... answering it would probably require solving the infinite secrets of the universe."

The others nodded in agreement.

"Well, on that note, back to the topic of school... if you've never been to this dimension, then needless to say you don't have any kind of records or report cards... I guess that would mean we'd have to hack into the big database, make up some fake info, cover our tracks properly, have a foolproof alibi...plus probably fake a phonecall from your old school..." Elaine was looking exhausted just thinking about all the complex arrangements. "Basically, it would take a whole lot of unauthorized system access, fraud and various other illegal activities that would get me suspended if I ever got caught."

Ed and Al looked at her kind of strange.

"...What do you mean, "hack into the database"? Isn't there just a big filing cabinet or something?" Edward asked, confused.

Then Elaine gave him a look that suggested she was trying to make him evaporate. A squinting, exasperated look. "_God_, no. _No, _there is _not_ just a big filing cabinet. It's all regulated and organized on a board-wide computer network- crap, you don't know what that is, do you?"

The two brothers shook their heads, bewildered.

"_UGH! _I'm gonna go eat breakfast. Read those books and be quiet. I might be able to come back down before I leave, but chances are high I won't have time. I'll be back at four. I _refuse _to explain computers, I really can't handle that. You people," she concluded, "are really..._inconvenient." _

And with that, she turned and carefully edged back up the stairs.

A pause was necessary to absorb this conversation, which had raised more questions than answers for the Elric Brothers. After which, little more could be said by either one but "She really knows how to make guests feel _welcome_..." After that, they both clamoured for the encyclopedia to find out what a computer was.

**Morrison Falls Public School**

**Main Street, Morrison Falls, **

**Ontario, Canada**

**8:41 AM**

Elaine had not been able to make her second trip to see the "hostages", as it had taken her longer than expected to brush her hair, and she now made her way to the far end of the schoolyard where she caught her bus. Looking ahead, she could see two figures by the chain-link fence, the taller of which was wearing a bright blue winter coat and a green toque. Elaine immediately recognized Samantha, who, accompanied by her irritating younger brother, was always the first to arrive at the bus stop. Drawing closer to the stop, Elaine waved and her friend waved back. She groaned as she set down her heavy backpack, which reminded her that yesterday had been Tuesday, and that she had forgotten to play her flute again.

The usual greetings were said, consisting of little more than a "Hey," from both parties, and then Sam returned to obsessively reading a volume of _Bleach_. It was generally a good idea to let her read when she wanted to. Otherwise scary things might happen. So Elaine stood for a while, struggling to contain the excitement of the news that she wouldn't let herself tell anyone. Not that anyone would even believe her if she did... _but anyway, _she thought, _everyone thinks I'm weird enough as it is. Why make them think I hallucinate, too? Even so, this is going to be tough. _The secret that she was hosting refugees from another dimension was burning a hole in her brain, waiting to be let out and told to someone.

Her vow of silence was only tested further when the kids from her own grade arrived at the stop (Samantha was in the eighth grade). Once again Averie criticized Elaine's baggy jacket and declared how cold she was, Brittany attempted to control her seven-year-old brother, Andre complained about carrying his heavy trombone for music class, and Candice was the only one on her side.

In order to keep herself occupied Elaine made small talk about school, complaining about how much math homework they had had, complaining about the horrors of gym class, discussing the best way to prove to the school board that they didn't need to eat in the gym instead of in their classrooms... she almost forgot about the news, but it was still there in the back of her mind. She had to get to school so that she could discuss things more with Rachel. Her fragile sanity depended on it.

Unfortunately the bus was late. Again. The bell at Morrison Falls Public rang about five minutes before the bus arrived. Elaine made her way towards the back, because in the grand tradition of school buses that's just what everyone does. Except the kindergartens, who try to sit closer to the front. She was able sit in the seat second from the back, since Caitlin the Grade  
Eight was away for some reason. There were three grade eights on the bus, Sam, Caitlin, and Candice's older sister Caroline. Older students were allowed by the bus driver to kick younger students out of the seats that they wanted, thus establishing a natural food chain-type system.

Looking to her left, Elaine saw that Blake was in the seat opposite her, sitting with Paige, a small-for-her-age grade six who, despite her size, always seemed older than she really was. There were conversations around her that she desperately wanted to join, but wouldn't let herself. She didn't trust herself to talk when she had such important information to be said. So instead she isolated herself, staring out the window as the schoolbus thundered down Main Street.

It was a pretty short ride. Callaway Street was actually within a reasonable walking distance from Elaine's house, but the weather was rarely nice enough to walk in November, and besides, everyone loves a free ride, right? When the bus rolled to a halt in front of Callaway, she stepped off with more energy than usual, and was surprised to see all of her friends standing there on the gravel to meet her. Jarrod, Jessica, Austin and Christa were usually there, Amber and her minions sometimes showed up, but almost _never _did Rachel show up early enough to meet Elaine right off the bus.

"Hey! Rae, what's the occasion?" she said, stunned at this rarely seen gesture of punctuality.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Rachel replied, with mock offense.

"You're just, like...Here. And...On time. It's weird."

"I've been on time before!"

"When?"

Rachel paused for a second, then gave her friend a non-life-threatening smack to the shoulder. Just then the bell rang, and the two girls carried on their non-life-threatening-smack-fight until they were forced to branch off into their separate doors; Rachel lined up with the grade sixes since she was in a split class, and Elaine lined up with the larger group of grade sevens, being the French Immersion class.

**Underneath the Cselkcess Ruins**

**The Great Eastern Desert**

**January 4, Year 15 9:03 PM**

Winry sat in front of the gates for a long time, after everyone else had gone back upstairs. She had her engineering equipment with her, as that had been what had brought her to that spot in the first place. She spread out her tools on the floor in front of her, and began to reexamine the sketches and blueprints of Ed's automail. If they weren't going to see each other for at least a month, she figured she should get something done in the meantime. Besides... after a month, who knew what the condition of Ed's limbs would be?

Pushing all thoughts of missing the Elric brothers to the back of her mind, Winry set to work on redesigning the prosthetics, sending out subliminal bits of hope with every stroke of her pencil. Many floors above, she could hear raised voices, but clearer than those came the sounds of the desert at the surface, with its savage winds carrying her subtle wish to an unknown destination that might just have been the right place.

* * *

**E: **_Well, there you have it, folks! Was that as good as the other two chapters? Was it any good at all? Review please! I'll start on the next chapter right away... that way the story will get to the good part faster._

**R: **_Umm... yeah I really have nothing to say. Except for please review and I hope you liked this chapter._


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